The Pine Cone Egg, 1900 — Fabergé's Translucent Royal Purple
The Pine Cone Egg, 1900 — Fabergé's Translucent Royal Purple
An Imperial Easter egg from Nicholas II to his mother, in royal-purple guilloché enamel and rose-cut diamonds
The Pine Cone Egg is an Imperial Easter egg made by the workshop of Carl Fabergé in 1900, presented by Tsar Nicholas II to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, on Easter morning of that year. The egg is fashioned in the form of a closed pine cone, the body enamelled in translucent royal-purple over an engine-turned guilloché ground, set throughout with rose-cut diamonds. Its surprise — a mechanical miniature elephant of gold, enamel, and gemstones, with a tower-like howdah on its back — is now lost. The egg is held today in the McFerrin Family Collection of Imperial Fabergé in Houston and remains one of the more naturalistic conceits in the Imperial series.
Commission and presentation
The 1900 Pine Cone Egg was the gift of the Easter season from Nicholas II to his mother, by then the Dowager Empress following the 1894 death of Alexander III. The egg sits within the parallel series of Imperial eggs commissioned annually for both Maria Feodorovna and the Tsar's wife, Alexandra Feodorovna; the surviving Imperial gifts to the Dowager Empress are among the most accomplished of the workshop's output. The Pine Cone Egg was made under workmaster Mikhail Perchin, whose master's mark appears on the gold mount.
Materials and execution
The egg's body is constructed of gold over which translucent royal-purple enamel was fired in successive layers over a guilloché engraving in a pattern of overlapping scales evoking the imbricated structure of a pine cone. Each scale is set with a single rose-cut diamond at its tip, and the diamonds run uninterrupted from base to apex. The gold mount at the base is chased with a foliate band, and the egg sits on a small enamelled foot.
The translucent enamel over guilloché silver or gold is the technical signature of the Fabergé workshop and the most demanding of its decorative procedures. Fine guilloché work required engraving by hand on a rose-engine lathe, and the enamel layers were fired at successively lower temperatures to avoid disturbing the underlying ground. The royal-purple of the Pine Cone Egg is one of the deeper and more saturated colours achieved by the workshop and is frequently cited in studies of Fabergé enamel as an exemplar of the workshop's mastery of translucent over guilloché.
The lost surprise
Inside the egg sat a miniature mechanical elephant of gold, varicolour enamel, and rose-cut diamonds, carrying a tower-shaped howdah on its back, mounted on a small base. The elephant was wound by a key and walked forward in a clockwork motion. The piece referenced the Order of the Elephant of Denmark, the senior Danish chivalric order to which the Russian Imperial family was connected through Maria Feodorovna's birth as Princess Dagmar of Denmark. The mechanical elephant has been lost since the dispersal of the Imperial collection in the early Soviet period; only contemporary archival photographs survive to document its appearance.
Provenance after 1917
Following the Bolshevik seizure of the Imperial collections after the October Revolution, the Pine Cone Egg passed through the Soviet Antikvariat sales apparatus of the late 1920s and 1930s, when Stalin's government liquidated Imperial treasures for foreign currency. The egg surfaced in the Western market and passed through several private collections before its acquisition by Artie and Dorothy McFerrin of Houston, whose collection of Imperial Fabergé is among the most important in private hands. The egg has been exhibited at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and in travelling Fabergé exhibitions in the United States and Europe.
Position within the Imperial series
The Pine Cone Egg is one of approximately fifty Imperial eggs made by Fabergé between 1885 and 1917 and one of about forty-three known to survive. Its naturalistic form — a closed pine cone — places it within a small subgroup of botanically inspired Imperial eggs alongside the Bay Tree Egg of 1911 and the Lilies of the Valley Egg of 1898. Fabergé's translucent purple enamel work is most often associated with the Pine Cone Egg, and the piece is routinely reproduced in survey volumes on the workshop and on Imperial Russian decorative arts.
In the trade and collecting market
Imperial Fabergé eggs have not been offered at public auction since the late 1990s; transactions in the past quarter-century have been by private treaty between collectors, museums, and dealers specialising in Russian works of art. The reference market for valuation is therefore informed primarily by the Forbes Collection sale to Viktor Vekselberg in 2004 (nine Imperial eggs for an undisclosed sum reported at over US$100 million) and by individual private treaty sales. The Pine Cone Egg's combination of translucent enamel, intact diamond setting, and confirmed McFerrin provenance places it among the more valuable surviving Imperial eggs.